Republicans, Democrats clash over immigration

WASHINGTON (AP):

House Republicans took a tentative step toward offering citizenship to some unauthorised immigrants Tuesday, but hit an immediate wall of resistance from the White House as Democrats said it wasn't enough.

The dismissive reaction to the Grand Old Party (GOP) proposal to offer eventual citizenship to some immigrants brought illegally to the United States (US) as children, underscored the difficulties of finding any compromise in the Republican-led House on the politically explosive issue of immigration.

That left prospects cloudy for one of President Barack Obama's top second-term priorities.

Congress is preparing to break for a monthlong summer recess at the end of next week without action in the full House on any immigration legislation, even after the Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan bill last month to secure the borders and create a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already in the country illegally.

The back-and-forth began hours before the House Judiciary Committee opened a hearing Tuesday afternoon on the question of legal status for immigrants brought here as children. House Republican leaders have embraced offering citizenship to such immigrants, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor is working on a bill toward the goal along with Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

They have not released their bill yet, but that did not stop Democrats from dismissing it even before the hearing began, saying that any solution that does not offer citizenship to all 11 million immigrants here illegally falls short.

Over Twitter, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer slammed "the cruel hypocrisy of the GOP immigration plan: allow some kids to stay, but deport their parents."

COUNTERATTACK

That got a counterattack from Cantor spokesman Rory Cooper,

"If White House opposes effort to give children path to staying in only country they know, how serious are they about immigration reform?"

In fact, Democrats and immi-gration advocates pushed hard in past years for legislation offering citizenship to immigrants brought as you. The so-called Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act passed the House in 2010 when it was controlled by Democrats, but was blocked by Senate Republicans.But now, with a comprehensive solution like the one passed by the Senate in sight, Democrats and outside activists say they will not settle for anything less.

Democrats and outside advocates are also concerned that the Cantor-Goodlatte bill, tentatively titled the Kids Act, will be narrower in scope than the DREAM Act, which would have offered legal status to people under age 35 who arrived in the US before age 16, had lived here for five years and had obtained a high-school diploma.